Enyne 1,4-diene formation

The isolated catalyst XV was evaluated in the RCM reaction of dienes and enynes at room temperature. The RCM of dienes easily takes place, even for disubstituted alkene bonds (Table 8.4). For enynes, the formation of vinylcycloalkenes takes place more slowly but in high yield [34]. 

An enyne cycloisomerization was employed in Wender and McDonald s second-generation formal total synthesis of ( )-phorbol (128) (Scheme 6-21) [49]. In this impressive example, enyne 126 was cyclized in 58% yield to provide tricycle 127. Apparently, a tricyclic alkylpalladium intermediate is reduced in situ with (Mc2SiH)20 prior to / -hydride elimination, preventing diene formation. 

While diene metathesis or diyne metathesis are driven by the loss of a (volatile) alkene or alkyne by-product, enyne metathesis (Fig. 2) cannot benefit from this contributing feature to the AS term of the reaction, since the event is entirely atom economic. Instead, the reaction is driven by the formation of conjugated dienes, which ensures that once these dienes have been formed, the process is no longer a reversible one. Enyne metathesis can also be considered as an alkylidene migration reaction, because the alkylidene unit migrates from the alkene part to one of the alkyne carbons. The mechanism of enyne metathesis is not well described, as two possible complexation sites (alkene or alkyne) exist for the ruthenium carbene, leading to different reaction pathways, and the situation is further complicated when the reaction is conducted under an atmosphere of ethylene. Despite its enormous potential to form mul-... 

Based on his previous work on the catalytic double addition of diazo compounds to alkynes173 using Cp RuCl(COD),174 Dixneuf has developed an efficient one-step synthesis of alkenyl bicyclo[3.1.0]-hexane derivatives of type 163 from enyne precursors 162 (Scheme 43). The catalytic cycle starts with the formation of an Ru=CHR species. It then adds to an alkyne to form ruthenacyclobutene 166, which evolves into vinylcarbene 167. [2 + 2]-Cycloaddition of 167 gives ruthenacyclobutane 168. The novelty in this transformation is the subsequent reductive elimination to give 170 without leading to the formation of diene 169. This can be attributed to the steric hindrance of the CsMes-Ru group. 

Trost et al 1 have observed product distribution to be dependent in part on the steric and electronic properties of the substrate. For example, linear enyne 48 (Equation (30)) cyclized exclusively to the Alder-ene product 49, whereas branching at the allylic position led to the formation of 1,3-diene 50 (Equation (31)) under similar conditions. Allylic ethers also give 1,3-dienes this effect was determined not to be the result of chelation, as methyl ethers and tert-butyldimethylsilyl ethers both gave dialkylidene cyclopentanes despite the large difference in coordinating ability. 

Although numerous advantages are associated with the use of supercritical carbon dioxide (scC02) as an ecologically benign and user friendly reaction medium, systematic applications to metal-catalyzed processes are still rare. A notable exception is a recent report on the use of scC02 for the formation of industrially relevant polymers by ROMP and the eyelization of various dienes or enynes via RCM [7]. Both Schrock s molybdenum alkylidene complex 24 and the ruthe-... 

In Section 9.2, intermolecular reactions of titanium—acetylene complexes with acetylenes, allenes, alkenes, and allylic compounds were discussed. This section describes the intramolecular coupling of bis-unsaturated compounds, including dienes, enynes, and diynes, as formulated in Eq. 9.49. As the titanium alkoxide is very inexpensive, the reactions in Eq. 9.49 represent one of the most economical methods for accomplishing the formation of metallacycles of this type [1,2]. Moreover, the titanium alkoxide based method enables several new synthetic transformations that are not viable by conventional metallocene-mediated methods. 

Ring-closing metathesis of an enyne, which has double and triple bonds in the molecule, is a remarkable reaction which is useful in synthetic organic chemistry. In enyne metathesis, the double bond is cleaved and carbon-carbon bond formation occurs between the double and triple bonds. The cleaved alkylidene part is moved to the alkyne carbon. Thus, the cyclized compound formed in this reaction has a diene moiety [Eq. (6.77)]. The reaction is also called skeletal rearrangement and is induced by Pt, Pd, Ga, and Ru catalysts ... 

---